Monday, 9 January 2012

One of the shortest articles I've ever written - wrote it before the India-Australia series started. Seems a lifetime ago now...

Virender Sehwag walks into a gladiatorial arena. There's a yearning need to establish who is the greater destroyer in his battle. And when Sehwag walks in, the arena is the Colosseum and he is General Maximus. The fiercest gladiator in the arena, the most feared man for any opponent unlucky enough to be on the opposite side. Fear? What's that? It's for lesser mortals, the ones facing him.

Rahul Dravid walks into a construction site. There's a foundation - sometimes well laid, sometimes not. But he's the foreman. It's his responsibility to see to it that a building is built, brick by painstaking brick. If the foundation is faulty, he lays a new one. If it's good, he builds a sky-scraper on it. Sometimes, he works with material that is not always top-class. Sometimes the men who sit in offices assign him unreasonable demands. And yet, Rahul Dravid continues to build - making the unreasonable possible, converting mediocre material into solid high-rise buildings.